


Reassociation

by Whreflections



Series: Recombination verse [3]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cooking, Hannigram style, Implied/Referenced Minor Character Infidelity, Implied/Referenced Natural Disaster, Implied/Referenced Past Parental Abandonment, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Murder Husbands, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-17 20:15:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13084539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whreflections/pseuds/Whreflections
Summary: 10 years after their fall from the cliff, Hannibal and Will are celebrating the milestone they've reached by spending some time by the ocean in Portugal.  Both of them have their eyes on future developments, but as with most things in life, as they move forward, they have to look back at old foundations, and the reminder that every future is built on the fragments of its past.





	Reassociation

**Author's Note:**

> You don't know how excited I am to finally share this publicly, guys. SO EXCITED. 
> 
> A few things about this-
> 
> 1\. This will probably forever be one of my favorite pieces for a few reasons, and one of those is that I've been to the square where these two go to look at the water in this fic. It's beautiful. Everyone should see it if they get the chance.  
> 2\. I am so invested in the dogs in this verse, you don't even know.  
> 3\. ...so invested in this verse in general, so if you ever have any questions about it feel free to pester me, as I don't have a long fic planned for this verse right now but I'll probably forever be coming back to it doing scattered oneshots, and I'd be happy to ramble about it anytime if you send me an ask XD
> 
> Thank you so SO much to everyone who put Radiance together, and to everyone who backed it. I had a phenomenal time being part of it. Can't wait to do it all again next time we get a book together, and you know why I'm already anticipating that?
> 
> Because fannibals are unstoppable. Love you guys.

In the entryway, Will takes off his shoes.  It keeps Hannibal's lip from curling at the sand, and the clay flagstones turned hot from a day in the sun feel like home beneath his feet.  Home is in the air, too-- the scent of baking bread, the muffled lilt of strings.  Jester dances around Will's feet like a jostled cricket, back and forth, nails tapping light staccato.  It's a moment before Will catches him, his irritated little huff answered by Will's patient laughter.  He's so full of fire, eager to learn everything Will's tried to teach expect the finer points of becoming a house dog.  
  
His sighs as Will towels his feet with the soft cloth kept by the door are heavy with the depth of his suffering.  
  
Will opens the gate into the main house before he sets him down, smiles at the little impatient kicks against his chest that come in the seconds it takes him to set the scruffy little Podengo down on the floor.  He sends him off with a quick, teasing pat against his side, his whisper fond and conspiratorial.  
  
"Go on; go get him."  
  
No matter how thorough he is with the towel, Hannibal will find sand on his pants later.  He always does—or always pretends to.  After ten years as dog co-parents, it's pretty clear, now, that he complains more out of habit than honest irritation.  The dogs are a part of Will, and there is no part of Will that he doesn't cherish, doesn't alternately clutch to his chest and hold up to the light to see every facet.  Even the parts that leave his hands burned.  Compared to those, the dogs are easy.  
  
Jester skitters off down the hall and out of sight like a pebble from a slingshot.  Will follows at a more measured pace, entirely unsurprised when the rest of the pack doesn't come rushing forward to meet him.  Hannibal is cooking.  Odysseus might have had a different homecoming, too, if there'd been a kitchen nearby.  
  
Hannibal's voice distinguishes itself from the music the closer he gets, quiet and soft, his familiar cadence flowing into Will and over him, easing the faint tension always present when they parted but rarely fully realized until the moment it released him.  "...so I'm afraid you're going to have to wait.  You can't arrive late and expect that I've saved anything for you."  
  
"Liar." Will tugs his package out from the bag slung over his shoulder, tosses the carefully wrapped bundle onto the counter loud enough to slap but well out of the way of the herbs Hannibal's been cutting.  "You've got his piece of sausage in the fridge.  It's probably labeled.  You just won't give it to him while I'm here to try and teach me not to be late with the fish."  
  
"If that's the case, I'd be taking on quite an ambitious lesson."  Hannibal's smile is in his eyes, not his mouth, but Will sees the welcome there, too.  Soft at the corners, pleased.  Settled.  As a boy, Will never thought he'd understand what it was to come home at the end of a day and feel grateful to be a piece of a larger whole.  
  
The dogs scuttle around Will's feet, weaving and prancing.  Now that he's where they are, where the food is, they're more than happy to welcome him with full enthusiasm.  Smoke rubs determinedly against his calf like a cat.  In a moment, he'll drop to his knees to pull her in against his chest and kiss the near invisible white spot between her eyes.  First, there's Hannibal.  
  
Will steps around the end of the island and into his space without hesitation, hooks an arm around his waist and reaches up to tip Hannibal's chin to him for a kiss-  
  
That Hannibal evades, in favor of nosing at his hairline, his body gone still as he breathes Will in like he's wary of stirring the air while he concentrates.  
  
Will's smile crooks a little to the right, a habit made years ago when the scar tissue in his cheek felt tighter than it does now and it was easier to shift toward the pull.  "Some people would consider that rude, you know."  
  
Hannibal inhales again, slow and considering.  He smells the crowd of the train station, the piss on the streets, the salt of the ocean, the myriad fish of the market mingling with raw pork from the next case over.  The kiss he presses to Will's temple is lingering, an overlay.  It's been a long time since he carried the near suffocating panic at Will's departure that he did in their early days, but any deviation is still noted, analyzed, turned over until examination renders it less threatening.  "You didn't take the boat out."  
  
"Not today, sorry."  Will's hand drifts up and into Hannibal's hair, sifting through it to feel the silk of it against the calluses on his palm.  He likes it best like this, undyed, all ash and silver.  The sight of it can hit his chest like a spike in the right light, but he's come to love it for its reality, its proof of alteration.  If Hannibal remained unchanged, this drawn out dream he's been living in would be nothing but, proof that he was somewhere alone, living out in the confines of his mind a world he'd failed to reach.  It was a pointed blessing to bear witness to Chiyoh's beloved wildcat growing old.    "We got distracted, then it was later in the day than I thought, so."  
  
Hannibal hums, a sound not altogether pleased.  Even fish from his favored market in Chiado where Will had gone pales without fail in comparison to fish pulled from the sea by Will's own hands, dispatched and cleaned by them on their own boat.  
  
Through distinct effort, Will doesn't roll his eyes.  "You asked for sea bream; I wanted to bring sea bream.  I could have fished all day and not caught one and you've got two there."  _Don't be greedy_ is in the tug of his fingers, the slight nip he tilts his head to give to Hannibal's chin.  
  
In lieu of answer, Hannibal's hand rises to grip at his curls, holding Will in place to catch him in a kiss.  For half a second, Will considers pulling back to tease him, but for the moment he wants Hannibal's mouth more than he does the glimmer of exasperation fading to fondness he'd get if he refused.  Hannibal's kiss now is the greeting Will expected moments ago, warm and full, rich with worship.  He has learned its style returning to Hannibal’s side from the bar on nights at the opera and coming ashore from work on the boat to find Hannibal sun warm on the dock.  Familiar, but never static, never old. 

That Hannibal lets him go with minimal reluctance when Will pulls back with a last kiss to the corner of his mouth is telling.  Either he has components already in process that can’t wait, or Will arrived with the fish later than he realized.  Both, perhaps.  On his walk on the beach, he’d grown too absorbed in his own thoughts to pay mind to the time.   

Without waiting to be asked, he begins to unpack the fish, aware of Hannibal’s eyes on his hands as he exposes the glint of scales to the light. 

“Will you fillet them, please?”

Will nods, and they weave back and forth for a moment in the concert of intimacy, gathering  knives and cutting boards and water and lemon.  With the head of the first fish heavy in his hand, Will considers throwing it to Freya and decides against it.  Before he can set it aside, however, Hannibal has caught his wrist.  Will lets it go, amused in a way that warms him down to his gut as he watches Hannibal cut the cheeks from the fish as smooth as carving butter. 

“He is too fine a specimen to have his cheeks go to waste, wouldn’t you say?”

Will’s laughter is soft, careful to be kind.  This is, after all, behavior he wants to encourage, behavior he _has_ encouraged.  “Are you talking to me, or the dogs?” 

Hannibal flips the first cheek into the air and Patch catches it with an alligator snap of his jaws. 

Will’s eyes fall back to his work, to his own knife and its slide through sea-cool flesh.  “Don’t give him both of them.  Give the other to Freya.” 

Based on the ensuing ‘pop’ of jaws, he either didn’t listen or didn’t try very hard. 

Hannibal shifts until their shoulders are just brushing, little more than a whisper of cloth and a hint of radiated heat.  There had been moments, near the beginning, where Will had tried to pinpoint what he felt at Hannibal’s side in the kitchen—the strange, crawling feeling of something not unlike the buzz of addiction, a draw not to the act itself but the way Hannibal opened to welcome him in. 

A hit of gentle, welcome vivisection, a glimpse of the processes that moved beneath his skin.  They’d talked about Mischa here, briefly, and Murasaki.  Paris, and Florence.  Kills they’d made together, kills Hannibal had made years ago and alone.  Glimpses into certain rooms had to be quicker than others, but it was easier, always easier with Will there to wrap his hand around Hannibal’s wrist, tug him back and close the door. 

Hannibal’s exhale stirs Will from his thoughts, a prelude to speech.  His knuckles graze Will’s forearm as he reaches for an artichoke.  “In Japan, sea bream is often served on auspicious occasions.” 

Will casts his mind back on instinct, searching.  The Dragon fell in fall; they took up residence in Chile in the spring.  None of the firsts that happened in the months in between can possibly fall now, at the height of summer.  Relieved that he’s forgotten nothing he should have remembered, Will flips his fish over and begins to filet the other side, peeling flesh back from the spine the like the turn of a page. 

“It’s probably close to Patch’s birthday, but I don’t think he’ll appreciate the artichoke hearts.”  At the sound of his name, Patch dashes around the island to Will’s side, eager to be sure he isn’t missing anything.  At four he’s in his prime, enormous but often still puppy clumsy, almost tripping over his own feet now as he screeches to a stop to pant close enough that Will can feel his breath on his thigh.  Hardly the small scrap of a pup they’d pulled out of a trash can in Johannesburg. 

Before Hannibal can mind the teasing, Will continues, his arm pressed full against Hannibal’s for a moment as he lays the filet on wax paper.  “Is today an auspicious occasion?” 

“It holds that promise.  It’s as yet unfinished, rife with possibility.” 

A glance from the corner of his eye shows a seriousness to him Will hasn’t seen in a while, and Will wonders not for the first time if their mind palaces haven’t come to overlap too much, if his thoughts from the beach and last month and two months before haven’t started to lap over.  It doesn’t make his stomach twist or the scar above it ache, but maybe it should.  If Hannibal is lacking in irritation, these days, maybe _he’s_ lacking in physical self-preservation.

Or, maybe there’s trust here at last.  He can’t imagine, now, Hannibal killing him or even cutting him unless it was welcome, needed.  All the other roads have gone choked and overgrown, fallen away into disrepair and memory. 

Hannibal’s chop to remove the base of the artichoke is clean, a single stroke. 

“I thought we might take a walk after dinner.  In the city, by the water.  There’s something I’d like to show you.” 

Will nods, thoughts swirling now between the unpolished edges of a proposition he’s not yet ready to make and the bits of beauty in Lisbon that Hannibal has already fed into his palms, one drop at a time.    “Yeah.  I’d like that.”   

++++++

Lisbon is a sea of sound and movement, more alive when the evening comes than it is at midday.  Now, in the still-strong sun of early evening, they are surrounded by the murmur of voices, the ding and whir of streetcars.  Down every alley and side street they pass, restaurateurs are dragging chairs and tables out to block narrow little streets and wide staircases, preparing for dinners that will carry on well into the night. 

From their first week here, Will remembers the novelty of dinner at 10:30, a shared bottle of wine and the genuine smiles of their server who thought nothing of it when they remained well past midnight, lost in conversation and each other.  From further down the street the strains of fado music had drifted on the cool breeze, and an old man two tables away had pulled his wife to her feet to dance.  The night was crisp and clear and Will had floated for a moment in the surreal feeling that came over him sometimes, the enduring sensation of living inside the fragile skin of a bubble borne up by dreams. 

Hannibal’s hand tangled with his is an anchor that tethers them both.  As the street opens up onto a large square, they pass a café where the patrons’ plates are mounded high with shiny, striped snail shells.  A wooden A-frame sign reading _Há, caracóis!_ in fading pink lettering stands in the middle of the sidewalk, the crowd parting around it like a rock in the stream.  

Before Hannibal the scent of the snails with their butter and sauce wouldn’t have appealed to him, but he’s developed a taste for many things he’d never have imagined.  Snails are easy. 

Will’s thumb smoothes against the side of Hannibal’s hand, long slow strokes.  A statue of a man on horseback dominates the square, an imposing figure on a pedestal high enough to leave him towering over the milling crowd below.  “Is he why we’re here?”

“No.”  Hannibal smiles at Will first, then at the statue, his eyes squinted against the sun.  “He is King José the First, and he is coincidental, though he has his fine points.  During his lifetime, he accumulated one of the largest collections of operatic scores in Europe.” 

“Of course you’d know that.”  To soften the blow already blunted with fondness, Will draws Hannibal’s hand to his mouth and kisses his knuckles, the movement so easy it’s almost automatic.  “Looks like he thought pretty highly of himself.”  Around the hooves of King José’s mount, snakes curl and rear, mouths  open.  The sculptor chose to leave the gruesome details of the trampling to the imagination, but the intent is all too clear, a step beyond St. Patrick. 

“He needed to be thought highly of, by the end.  The people were in need of stability they could trust, proof of old demons banished.  It’s remarkable how desperately people need to believe themselves protected in the face of proof there’s no assurance for any of us.” 

Ah, there it was.  The truth of the importance of this place, carried in the tilt of Hannibal’s head, the flash of the irrepressible joy he found in attempting to prove the universe permanently out of balance. 

“What do you remember hearing since our arrival about the earthquake?” 

“Not much.”  Pieces, enough to know that in Lisbon, _the_ earthquake could only refer to one.  Their pace has slowed, a meandering course across the square and toward the water.  Will’s eyes drag from the arch almost behind them, across the statue, down to the water.  For a city so often packed in close, it was an enormous expanse.  “I know the churches spread the fires.  We’ll never really know how many people died as a result of it; the effects were too far spread.”

“Far spread, and lasting.  How many died as a result of the months the city spent in disrepair?  Is their blood, too, on the hands of the earth?”

“Maybe.  Maybe José over there was unprepared.” 

“Undoubtedly.  What occurred that day hadn’t happened in his remembrance, and hasn’t since.”  A gust of wind presses against them both, tangling Will’s curls and stirring Hannibal’s hair, soft and untamed.  Before Will can give in to the temptation to settle it with his fingers, Hannibal shoves it back.  “The earthquake struck on All Saint’s Day in 1755, in the morning.  Most of the city was in church.  Thousands were killed as the buildings collapsed.” 

“God painting in broad strokes?”

“He wasn’t finished.”  

With King José’s shadow well beyond them, now, they stood near the water, at the top of a wide set of marble stairs leading into the water itself.  Now, at low tide, the stairs were revealed right to the bottom, the lowest ones coated with algae so thick they looked spongy and soft, slick and treacherous. 

Hannibal let go of his hand in favor of shifting behind him, hands on his shoulders.  If he closed his eyes, Will could almost feel the radiating pulse of the beat of his heart. 

“Those that survived the collapses ran into the streets.  As the fires began to spread, their only choice of survival seemed to be to flee toward the empty spaces, toward the docks and squares by the water.  As the largest in the city itself, hundreds fled here to find solace and safety on the banks of the Tagus.” 

Will’s breath hitches, the reality of it coming to him now in the flash of a memory of 2004.  Images on the TV in the FBI cafeteria of the sea receding. 

“Yes.”  There’s praise there, and curiosity.  They share rooms in their minds, now, but he can’t always see what Will sees.  He can’t feel the stillness in the air as the water goes out, down past the stairs, baring shells and old bits of pottery and the little feathery bodies of barnacles reaching up and up for water.  “They ran from the fire, and death came from behind.  They were all swept out to sea with a single stroke, past the very steps that welcomed dignitaries from around the world, drowned and battered against the overturned hulls of boats that fared no better.  The destruction was absolute.  A city wiped clean as a slate.” 

God with an eraser sounds so much cleaner than what he sees.  Blood slick on the stairs, the crackle of fire, the scent of flesh cooking past the point where it sizzles and smells like meat—

There’s a peal of laughter, and Will’s eyes snap open.  The water dazzles him for a moment but he blinks and focuses, and sees.  To the left there’s a group of teenagers playing football, two girls closer to where he stands with Hannibal leaning out toward the water and feeding something he can’t quite identify to seagulls.  Snails, probably. 

His exhale is slow, matching the squeeze of his fingers.  He didn’t even realize he’d reached up to grip Hannibal’s hand. 

“Not entirely blank.  Enough lived to rebuild it.” 

“But were those who rebuilt it the same as they were before the quake?  They were drawn into the elements, bathed even in mind if not in body in earth and fire and water.”

“Drawn in too deep not to emerge reborn?”

“Just so.” 

Will sighs, leans back until he’s pressed full against Hannibal’s chest, held up by his strength.  He has nightmares still sometimes about the water, the force of it, the thought he’d never given breath to that for a moment there he’d wondered if he’d made a terrible mistake.  To emerge from that hellish uncertainty to Hannibal’s palm against his spine and his lungs heaving up what felt like half the Atlantic, how could he have felt anything _but_ reborn?  There was pain enough in it for birth, newness enough in the dizzying giddiness he felt realizing that nothing tied him now, all prior strings cut. 

“Can you hear them?” 

Will’s noise of dissent was soft, fuzzy with distraction.  “Too long gone.  For a minute, I caught a glimpse of the reverberations.  Fractured pieces.” 

“Aftershocks.”

It isn’t appropriate to laugh, but he’s gotten used to Hannibal’s humor, too.  If he’s honest, he appreciated Hannibal’s humor from the beginning.  He can remember laughter, in those early days, untainted by honesty. 

If he’s very, very honest, he likes this better. 

Will shifts and Hannibal moves with him, their positions rearranging until Hannibal’s arm is wrapped around his waist and Will’s rests against it, idly tracing vein on the back of Hannibal’s hand.  With the tilt of his head back against Hannibal’s shoulder, he lets the world drift a little out of focus, a narrow window through half open eyes.  The water laps incessant at the stairs, kisses the feet of a quick stepping gull picking their way amongst the algae.  The Atlantic’s deceptively teasing for a force great enough to sweep this square, to swallow him and Hannibal whole. 

“Thank you for showing me this place.” 

“Wait a moment, before you thank me.  I can’t say I didn’t have ulterior motives.”

“Your ulterior motives have ulterior motives.  If I worried about that, there’d be no room in my head for anything else.” 

“I’ve done something you might not approve of.” 

This time, Will’s laughter lists towards harsh, an unwanted lick of his old bitterness rising.  There’s much behind them, long behind them, but it hasn’t yet vanished entirely.  Maybe it can’t.  Maybe it shouldn’t.  There’s no proof he can see that they’d be better off with less knowledge of each other, of how deeply they both can wound if they choose.  Sometimes, you have to learn how something bleeds to teach you what actions to avoid. 

“That’s not new, either.” 

“This is.”  Hannibal’s grip tightens, a preemptive block against any motion Will might make to turn and face him.  His chin nudges at Wills shoulder twice, then again.  “On July 9th 1984 Everett Graham reported his wife as a missing person.” 

It says something, really, that the only part of that sentence that makes his stomach jolt is his father’s name. 

With a heavy swallow, Will unsticks his throat.  “He wanted to believe she was missing, not in Arizona with the night guy from the 7-11.”  Through the cotton of his shirt, Will feels the anger in Hannibal’s exhale.  “I knew.  I never…wondered; I knew.  Even then.  She used to take me and let me play in the parking lot out back while she talked to him.”  They’re early memories, but he still carries them.  The heat of cracked asphalt in the Louisiana summer, the roar of cicadas behind him while he weaved little dog figures his dad had bought him down at the Tractor Supply between the weeds sprouting up through cracks in the pavement. 

They aren’t bad memories, though they probably should be.  At his waist, Hannibal’s grip is strong, and Will knows without casting for it that he’s imagining the heft of a gas station coffee pot, how hard he’d have to bring the glass down on her skull.  Maybe a tire iron. 

There’s a little nausea there, but a shake of his head clears it.  “Don’t; I didn’t miss her.  She wasn’t a big part of my life while she was there, much less once she was gone.”  He didn’t miss her, and he didn’t miss that hopeful look in his dad’s eyes when he came home with flowers and boxes from the jewelry counter at Sears he couldn’t really afford, either.  After a couple years, they were both better with her gone, living in a world of their own where his dad smiled more and they went fishing on the weekends. 

“I had thought you might remember the date, but I knew at dinner you didn’t.  If you had—“

“I’d have reacted when you called it an auspicious occasion.”  It’s strange, how easy it all lays out in his mind.  From anyone else it’d feel like a bizarre and invasive level of snooping, of layers peeled back without his consent, but with Hannibal…

He’s done much without consent, good and bad.  This doesn’t feel like a violation so much as gently fumbling fingers, trying to feel out the edges of bone and muscle beneath his skin, to judge by prodding where his nerves connect to his heart, where hands connect to his mind.  Hannibal would have remembered the date, if he cared about the person lost.  Hannibal would have dwelled on it every year, rubbed the pattern of the cup smooth. 

Hannibal would have needed to take the day, shake its skin free with his teeth, and start again. 

“You brought me here to remind me we’ve already been reborn.”

“To overlay any possible negative association with a positive one.  We have been reborn, and we can be again.”  Hannibal’s arm stays locked around his waist, even as Will feels his other arm move, a shift of his shoulder as his hand goes into his pocket, comes out again, and presses what he retrieved against the side of Will’s hand.  “If you wish it.” 

The angle’s awkward, but even before Will twists his hand to take what’s being offered, he can feel in the rising stutter of his heart that the piece pressing into his skin is small and metallic, perfectly round. 

When he takes it into his palm and turns that hand over to expose the band to the light, the stuttering stops. 

The band itself is rose gold, but there’s no shiny light of femininity about this ring.  It’s a darker hue, still bright but warm like the earth, like copper beginning to age.  It’d be pretty with its little flecks of onyx here and there, but not impressive, if not for the other stones set in it, in swirls and spirals that reminds him of a Van Gogh in miniature.  They’re not diamonds or rubies or anything most prospective spouses would deem all that precious; instead, they’re peculiar little opals, as full of glinting flame as any Australian opal in the world, but their backdrop isn’t snowy white, but brown.  Soft brown, like the mud from a Louisiana stream bed, caught on fingers and toes and ankles. 

 _Like if you took the sparkle off the water, and laid it right into the earth_ , that’s what his dad had said when he gave him the box of Louisiana opal, the corners of his eyes crinkling with his smile.  He’d have never been able to afford even that box of scraps, but he’d worked fixing equipment for a gem cutter here and there for two years free of pay so he could give something to his boy for finishing elementary school that’d make his eyes light up. 

Will hadn’t known that, then.  He hadn’t known that part for years. 

Hannibal could have afforded replacements, larger specimens, of course he could have, but looking at them, Will knows.  He knows.  There could be no other source. 

“How?”  He should be hoarse, incredulous.  Mostly his voice sounds wet, and small.  Thin, like a construct too unsteady to hold in a strong wind. 

“Chiyoh has most of your things, and many of mine.  She found the box and the note from your father.  I’d asked her to inform me of anything of note, and this—“ 

“Aren’t you supposed to be on one knee, for this?”  In his head, it seemed easier than talking about Chiyoh sifting through the shards of Will’s life, quick and clever eyes darting over his father’s smooth script.  In practice, it sounds harsher than he means.  He doesn’t feel harsh at all; he feels cut and sanded, worn smooth by Hannibal’s hands.

Hannibal’s attempt to pull away and drop is instantaneous, though Will stops him with a firm grip to his wrist.  He feels irrepressibly charmed, more so at Hannibal’s vague sound of something like distress.  Ten years, and in pieces and places, he’s still afraid that what he holds isn’t as solid as it seems.  He never had much practice with fear, until he met Will.  For the sake of its oddity and their particular history, it just might be with him for the rest of his life. 

Will has every intention of being around to remain a source of tangible defiance to those fears, every time.

“Stay.”  Will presses Hannibal’s wrist again as he says it, his fingers preoccupied with closing tight around the ring.  “I want you right where you are.  You can put it on me like this.” 

The shuddered out breath against his neck is endearing, too.  Right now, with the boundless love for this man he feels, anything they could undertake seems possible.  Anything at all. 

Hannibal’s hands are steady when he slides the band on, but their breath catches in tandem when it slips fully home.  It feels cool against his skin, wider than it looks.  Will’s mouth turns up into a smile, on both sides, so wide he can feel the twinge from the thickness in his cheek.  “You didn’t actually ask me, either.” 

“I’d planned to.  I intended to kneel and do it properly, but in the moment—“

“In the moment, you wanted to get it over with.  You thought I’d say no.” 

“No, but it was possible.  A large enough possibility, it seems, to mar the delivery.”

He’s annoyed with himself; Will can taste it rising unwanted in the back of his own throat, but he won’t let himself laugh, not at this.  Not when Hannibal probably practiced his speech two dozen times with no imperfections. 

Twisting a little, he reaches back to catch Hannibal’s hair, his kisses chaste at first as he presses them to either corner of Hannibal’s mouth, just past it to his cheek.  “You can do it again when we get home.”

“To do that, I’d have to take it off.  I’d rather not.”

“Yeah.  I’d rather you didn’t, too.”  He tilts his chin, asking for a kiss, and a for moment it’s not the square under their feet but the skull, not the cry of gulls and the gust of wind but the guttering of candles, the slow build of a bodiless choir. 

With Palermo cocooned around them, it seems safe to whisper a secret of his own, breathed in time to the stroke of his fingers through Hannibal’s hair.  “I’d like a wedding present.”

“Anything.”

“You can’t buy it.”

“That won’t stop me from providing it.” 

Like the flip of a book of sketches, Will sees Randall Tier, Cassie Boyle, Francis Dolarhyde, Bedelia Du Maurier.  Joshua Fourie, who left Hannibal with the scar that lashes diagonal across his ribs.  There was no sketch of the ending, there, nothing more than a glimpse of Hannibal’s scar and the man’s name.  The parts of him they hadn’t selected had been fed to the great whites, unwasted, but lacking in beauty, in vision.  The world had seen Hannibal’s visions, and a touch of Will’s.  No one but those lucky enough to see the stones where the Dragon had bled out had seen any measure of the visions they could create together. 

Now isn’t the time to ask; he can feel that now, despite how he’d just that afternoon tried to find a way to put it to words that don’t sound as if he wants to be caught.  Their life is precious to him, and he won’t risk it.  He won’t have Hannibal think he’s risking it, either, but the want isn’t going away, and when they leave Lisbon he wants it to be with an ode to all that they’ve become together, all that they’ve learned from Baltimore and Lisbon herself and all the cities that came between. 

A celebration of their love, a work of art, an affirmation, and a warning.  They live, still, and they will not be cowed. 

It’s not time to ask, yet, but looking at Hannibal, he’s not sure that matters.  There’s a familiar glimmer, there, that makes him certain they’re still in the church together, both hands on a sketchbook on the dais, seeing the same thing. 


End file.
